The Ruins Of A Soul
by xStormyx
Summary: How did Mia find the strength to go on and capture Dahlia Hawthorne after Diego's death?


. For any Nightfall fans who might read this, don't kill me. This has been lying around and there is a Nightfall update tonight!

No. Seriously.

Anyway, I wrote this for a friend who's a big Miego fan. Personally, I'm not so writing this was a bit of a challenge. I'm pretty sure there will be a part two to his but for now, let's leave it as a stand-alone. The image is perfect, I think. Just wanted people to see this beautiful piece of art. Obviously, it's not mine.

Reviews are much appreciated.

* * *

The Ruins Of A Soul

When Diego died, Mia didn't weep.

It was an odd fact – one that didn't ring right with her personality. She had been the type to fluster easily, the one who always needed Lana's guidance, the girl who had come from a village and somehow managed to ingrain herself in the city. Lana had taught her to always hold her head high in front of others and somehow she'd managed to do it but it didn't mean that alone, in the privacy of her apartment, she didn't collapse under the stress she'd bottled inside day in, day out. Even if nobody else knew she hung her head, tired after another day's work, _she_ knew. Mia felt the weight on her shoulders, getting heavier with each day she failed to find her mother, and she wept.

Yes, despite what Diego told her and what Lana had taught her, Mia Fey cried.

She cried for the ache of Maya's absence. She cried for her mother's disappearance. She cried for her own failures, the stresses of the city, each month she worried she wouldn't be able to send enough money home… and when Terry Fawles committed suicide, she cried then too – right in the middle of the courtroom.

And yet… when news of Diego's poisoning reached her, Mia didn't cry. When she found that the man she had grown to love was sleeping with death, she didn't shed a single tear. Her eyes blinked blankly, dry and empty of emotion. She swept off to the hospital where he lay in bed, barely just stabilised by the lethal effects of the poison. In her line of work, she had often heard people refer to the dead as looking peaceful, as if they were just sleeping… but when she'd seen Diego sleeping, she'd seen no peace. She'd seen nothing but the ghostly remain of his last emotion, etched and stamped in his features. It was one she recognised easily – she'd seen its mark in her own face every time she'd looked in the bathroom mirror while she cried.

The sharp pain of _failure_.

Is that what he'd been thinking as he'd collapsed, his body succumbing to the poison? That he'd failed?

Maybe it was because she knew how deep that pain cut that set her on the road to determination: she would have pursued Dahlia Hawthorne to the ends of the world anyway. She had loved Diego after all... But later, much later, she understood that it wasn't her love that had given her the strength to win. It was the determination to make sure that Diego's sacrifice had not been in vain. It was to make certain he had _not _failed.

The nurses had looked at her oddly when she'd asked if they still had the clothes he'd been wearing. There was a great deal of hesitancy when they nodded and they downright denied her access to them. It was only with the help of Gumshoe – a man with heart for her situation – that she had managed to attain those clothes.

And still, when Gumshoe's eyes filled with sorrow as he'd handed her Diego Armando's final suit, Mia hadn't cried. Even as she'd looked on the blood that spotted the vest, the young attorney's eyes had remained calm and expressionless. For a month she went about her business: she visited Diego every day, telling herself she would start the investigation the next morning and calmly reassuring herself Diego would wake up and when he did, she would tell him exactly how much she loved him.

It was a month later that Lana asked if Mia needed any help getting rid of Diego's things. Of course, her friend would never word it so harshly but in essence, that was what she was suggesting. And it was then, when she realised Lana didn't believe he would wake up again, that Mia finally broke down. It started with an argument that soon devolved into hysterics, tears and sobbing. It was only her best friend's presence that ensured her survival that night.

For two weeks, Mia tried to fight the pain as she tried to pack his things away. Diego and she had moved in together only 3 weeks before his poisoning and finding the boxes they hadn't had enough time to fold and stash away only increased the ache of his loss. Every time she thought she'd found the strength to fold up his clothes, she found her hands shaking, her heart racing and a harrowing echo of betrayal flow through her. How could she give up on him so easily? How could she lose faith so easily?

Those questions went through her head every day, every night she tried. Later, she couldn't really remember what had changed; all she knew was, one evening she looked at his possessions and found her perception drastically altered. Why was she fighting the pain of his loss when there was nothing in the world, not even the sanctity of death, that could take it away? Why was she trying to put his things away when no amount of blindness or distance could make her forget him? It didn't matter if she never drank coffee again, if she put blinders on to the world and blocked out all sound because Diego was there: under her skin, behind her eyelids and inside her mind. His coffee-scented whispers had long ago wrapped themselves around her heart and confined it.

There was no escape from him. There was no escape from this pain.

So Mia stopped trying to run. She embraced it, held it, sliced herself with it and healed herself with it. She became the blade, the wound, the blood and the scar. She hollowed herself out with knives and filled herself with the image of his last expression, the tremendousness of her own loss and the knowledge of his sacrifice. She twisted and melded and compressed it all to hold her indomitable will. She let it poison her and even if its effects didn't turn her hair white nor put her to sleep, Mia changed.

She stopped crying – and she started fighting.

.'.

She never put his belongings away. Instead, she gathered all the things that were special — his favourite vest, the thermos he kept with him, the cup he always used at home — and she defiled them.

She planted them all on a table and set Dahlia Hawthorne's picture atop them.

Lana had given her a slightly alarmed look when she saw it for the first time, no doubt wondering how safe Mia was to others and (probably) to herself. It was only when Mia explained her reasons for it that her friend's anxiousness subsided: she couldn't bear to look at his things, so tainted by the sheer image of that poisonous bitch. It drove her, this rage — it fuelled her to work harder than ever, to push through the needs that would bog her down. After all, how could she possibly sleep, knowing his things were poisoned by Dahlia's picture? How could she feel hunger when there was this sick feeling in the pit of her stomach? And so, the wheel of life turned, day giving way to night, giving way to day; she hoarded every infinitesimal detail of her investigation yet failed to see the rapidity with which her weight dropped. It was only when she collapsed, landing herself in the hospital and earning herself a harsh reprimand from her friend that she paid some attention to herself. Lana was right: how could she ensure Diego's sacrifice was not for nought if she was in hospital or – better yet – dead?

But, even though she focused more on her health, even though she was thoroughly watched by Lana, she was still ill because the sickness was in her blood — it flowed through her veins. And every day that Diego's essence was wrapped with Dahlia's her sickness grew. And even though it didn't weaken her, it slowly killed her until, by the time her victory came, all that was left was the ghostly resonance of life.

On the night of her victory, Mia burned Dahlia's picture, almost wishing she could burn off the fingers with which she'd touched it. She'd picked up his possessions which had lain on the table for so long and hugged them to her chest, trying to infuse them with her love to dispel the smoky claws of Dahlia's hellish essence but she couldn't. She felt it and smelt it, like decayed flesh clinging to a skeleton…

It sent her running. She grabbed his things, her keys and she raced out to her car and she drove and drove until she stood at the beach… the place where he had told her how much he loved her. She walked and ran and stumbled across the sand until the water was lapping at her feet and the wind swept over her skin, drying her tears.

Slowly, she walked in, her arms laden with his belongings and her arms unwound: all the things that she had cradled in her arms were lovingly accepted by the sea and Mia sat, watching them get carried out over the lapping, gentle waves, sinking as they went into the horizon. Finally, Diego was cleansed…

And so was she.

But hours later when his things were gone, when she was staring at nothing but the empty water, and Mia eventually went home and slept, that was the last night of her life. What Diego had always told her was lost in the echo of her memories. It didn't matter that it was all over because the next morning, when she awoke, there were no tears in her eyes.

There was nothing left of Mia there at all.


End file.
